What’s with the Pancakes on Shrove Tuesday?

A Shrove Tuesday reflection by Jamie Howison

For reasons on which I’m not at all clear, when I was growing up we always had pancakes for dinner on Shrove Tuesday. My family’s Presbyterian church didn’t pay any attention to Ash Wednesday - or even to Lent as a whole for that matter - but somehow Pancake Tuesday was an annual observance in my home. It wasn’t just in my household either. I grew up in the little neighbourhood of Woodhaven, which was at the time (how shall I put this…) rather monochrome in character. Every kid in my class would have been able to identify a religious affiliation, mostly either United or Anglican, but only a small percentage of those families actually attended church with any frequency. There were also three Roman Catholics and one Ukrainian Catholic in my grade, all of whom most definitely did attend weekly mass, and then there was a lone Jehovah’s Witness—my best friend, in fact—who seemed to have something on at his Kingdom Hall three or four days of each week. Aside from him, everyone in my grade would have been having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday. Poor kid, he not only missed out on Christmas, Halloween, and birthday parties, but on Pancake Tuesday as well!

I don’t think that this practice is in the cultural air anywhere near to that degree anymore, but it certainly isn’t entirely unknown. But why pancakes on Shrove Tuesday, and what is “shrove” anyway?

The word “shrove” is a form of the English word “shrive”—still in the English dictionary, but not much used—which itself comes from the Latin word scriber, which means “to write.” In Old English it evolved to mean “to prescribe,” and in time was adopted by the church to refer to the prescribing of penance in confession. Making your confession and receiving absolution accompanied by an act of penance came to known as being “shriven” of your sins. In that medieval context, the days leading up to the beginning of Lent on Ash Wednesday were seen as a time of confession and spiritual preparation (as if the forty days of Lent weren’t enough!), and so the final day before Ash Wednesday became Shrove Tuesday, or the Tuesday to be shriven.

But the pancakes? Again, a strong connection to Lenten practice, as pancakes were made with the eggs, butter, and sugar that were to then be set aside for the Lenten fast. Other cultures and nations had rather more gregarious practices on Shrove Tuesday, including those that held huge street parties for Mardi Gras (Fat Tuesday) or Carnival (from the Medieval Latin carnelevamen, literally, “the putting away of flesh”). The English, however, were much more modest in celebrating with their pancakes!

So why bother with a tradition like having pancakes on Shrove Tuesday? Well, for one thing it is kind of fun to have pancakes for dinner once a year. Simple traditions like this can lift your spirits merely through the attending to them, which is not a bad thing during times like these. And knowing the background story also means that those pancakes can be a reminder that you’re about to enter into a very particular season of the church year, even if you’re not about to call up Rachel or me to be “shriven” or fast from eggs and dairy for the ensuing six weeks!

If you do decide to opt for pancakes this year on Shrove Tuesday, do enjoy them. Regardless of what you might have for dinner that day, may you have a holy, blessed, and life-giving Lenten season.

Here’s a dependable recipe, drawn from the 1975 edition of The Joy of Cooking… a venerable cookbook for such things! If you want to download the recipe in PDF format, simply click here.

Pancakes or Griddle Cakes

Makes approximately 14 four inch pancakes

Sift before measuring:

1 ½ cups all-purpose flour

Resift with:

1 teaspoon salt
3 tablespoons sugar
1 ¾ teaspoons baking powder

Combine:

1 or 2 slightly beaten whole eggs
3 tablespoons melted butter
1 to 1 ¼ cups milk

Mix the liquid ingredients quickly into the dry ingredients. Test the griddle or pan by letting a few drops of cold water fall on it. If the water bounces and sputters, the griddle is ready to use. If the water vanishes, it is too hot!

Pour in the batter and let bubbles of batter begin to surface. Once the batter is more or less bubbly all over, flip the pancake to cook the other side.